Database Users

Fascinate stock email app & attachments

I have found that using the stock email app doesn't allow you to "open" or attach PDF files to emails.
I have three email accounts connected to the stock email app, Exchange, Gmail and Hotmail.
1) If I send an Excel or Word document to any of these accounts I get the option to "save" or "open" the attachment. However, if I send a PDF document to any of these accounts the only option is to the "save" the file. Then I have to go find it using a file manager before I can open it. I have tried Adobe PDF viewer & Thinkfree that comes on the device and neither will allow me to open PDFs in the email app.
2) The stock email application will not allow me to attach any files other than pictures. When I click attach it brings up the file manager (it appears to be the stock "my files" application) which allows me to view the SD card and won't show any other file types other than picture types. I have multiple PDFs on the SD card in various folders and NONE of them show up as being able to be attached to the email.
The weird part is that if I use the "Gmail" email application (the one that only allows gmail accounts) I can open PDFs straight from the Gmail application without saving first. I can also attach any file type using this application.
Does the stock email application suck this bad? My two co-workers with Dincs have no problem doing either of the above things.

I tried Touchdown, Maildroid & K9. They all attach all file types & open files directly from the email.
Does anyone elses mail app exhibit the same behavior as mine? Or did mine get messed up somehow.

The issue actually appears to be related to what program the email app will allow you to use to find attachments.
The stock mail program appears to use My Files, but it only allows you to see picture files. The Gmail program will only use "Gallery" to find attach files if you don't have a file explorer installed.
I have Astro installed and if you use the Gmail program and try to attach something it will ask you if you want to use Astro or the Gallery. I then went and uninstalled Astro and went back to attach a file through the Gmail App and it only allowed me to use the Gallery app to look for attachments.
So the problem actually DOES exist in the Gmail app, but the Gmail app will let you use other file explorers to look for attachments.
I just cant see how that got past whatever process they use in developing their app.... How can you design a mail app that doesn't allow you to attach anything but picture files.... I mean thats just ridiculous.
I would not recommend the Fascinate to be honest just because of this issue. Sure it can be worked around using other email apps and downloading file explorers. Its not that big of a deal if you only use Gmail, but if you heavily use exchange and have to rely on the mail app or a 3rd party mail app it sucks.

I ran into this just last night actually when I tried to open a pdf from an email.

So I emailed samsung to ask if this was intentional or not. They didn't give me a real good answer but here is what they said.
"Thank you for your inquiry. With the SCH-I500 mobile phone, you can only attach picture file types. If you would like to attach other files such as PDF files, you need to download an application through the android market for PDF application."
To me, that sounds like this was intentional and the stock mail app will never have the ability to attach anything other than pictures.

astraelraen said:
So I emailed samsung to ask if this was intentional or not. They didn't give me a real good answer but here is what they said.
"Thank you for your inquiry. With the SCH-I500 mobile phone, you can only attach picture file types. If you would like to attach other files such as PDF files, you need to download an application through the android market for PDF application."
To me, that sounds like this was intentional and the stock mail app will never have the ability to attach anything other than pictures.
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Out of curiosity, with all the great email apps that you mentioned having tried, why not just use one that does what you need it to do? That's one of the great things about Android: the stock apps are just there to get you started!

Maybe this is a bug due to the DB issues, but whenever I click "Read first unread" for this thread, it takes me here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=8315757#post8315757

Someone please recommend me a decent email client

I tried bluetoothing an mp3 over to my phone to set as a ringtone, that doesn't want to work, so I thought no problem, I can just email it.
The only option I have is to open the mp3, no option to save it.
Earlier a friend sent me an email with jpgs in it, couldn't open them or even see them as attachments.
So please, all I want is a decent mail client like the WinMo one, but with the ability to connect to two exchange accounts.
Does one exist?

I can't offer any real help with the email client as I'm very happy with the native Android one. You can try K9, available free on the Market, but I can't say whether it will resolve your problem or not.
However, if you want a simple way to copy files over to your phone, without going down the USB route, try Dropbox. It's free to open an account and get the software running on your PC (you get 250MB with a free account - I think. Could be more.) There's also an Android client - again free.
Here's the order of things I do to get a file on my phone if I can't be arsed going getting a USB cable.
I copy the file on my PC into the folder "\My Dropbox\Android" ("My Dropbox" is the Dropbox folder that you can have anywhere you like on your PC. Android is a sub-folder so I know what's in there.)
Open Dropbox on my phone and navigate to the file
Long-hold on the file and select "Download"
It's that easy. The file is now in the folder \sdcard\Dropbox\Android on my phone.
Incidentally, if you do go for Dropbox, every time you refer someone to it and they sign up using a link created for you (with a referrer ID in it), you get an extra 250MB of space free. It goes up to 10GB, which I'm happy to say I have
I hope this helps mate.

Thanks for replying John
Managed to get the file rebooting into WM and saving it from there, but I wouldn't be able to do that for my work account (WM is only set up for my exchange server at home) under android, and drop box isn't an option as I can't ask my boss/colleagues/clients to use it just so I can view a file they've already emailed out.

[APP] Extract Outlook winmail.dat / TNEF attachments

Dear all,
I guess many of us have already stumbled over "winmail.dat" or "attxxxx.dat" attachments in our Android email clients.
These attachment names usually occour, when somebody who is using a Microsoft Outlook EMail client sends you an certain RTF (rich text format) email with attachments. MS Outlook then packs these attachments into a TNEF (Transport-Neutral Encapsulation Format) envelope. Other MS Outlook Clients can deal with this format, but, however, most of the other email clients cannot! They will receive instead an attachment with the above mentioned naming and can basically do nothing with it.
While this is a well known (and annoying) circumstance there are already plug-ins for many open email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird. For Android however there seemed to be nothing (and I have been doing quite some research on it).
So I finally decided to write my own app to deal with TNEF attachments. Luckily there was already an existing Java package which could do the extraction job so that I "only" had to create the Android app around it and do some debugging on the original code. My kudos here go to Amichai Rothman for his Java TNEF package (http://www.freeutils.net/source/jtnef/)!!
I originally created this application for my own purposes but then I thought it is worth while sharing it with the community. It is already bi-lingual (english and localized to german) and should get its job done.
The app itself registers as a handler for *.dat or *.DAT files and for email attachments. When you e.g. try to open a "winmail.dat" attachment from within your Android email client or a "winmail.dat" file with your file browser the app should be launched or you see a chooser box where you can select this app. When you do so you will see an alert box. When you press "Ok" the app will try to extract the contents of "winmail.dat" to a local folder. The default for this folder is "/sdcard/winmail". After it has successfully completed the extraction the app leaves a notification. When you open the the notification it will show you the contents of the target folder in another alert box. You can then use any file manager to browser to the target directory to access the real attachments out of the "winmail.dat" envelope.
If you launch the app directly it will present you a setup screen with some explanation on it and the possibility to specify your own target directory to where the extracted files should go.
The only system privilege that the app acquires upon installation is to be able to write to the external storage (sdcard). So it does not really have the chance to do severe harm to your device
If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Likewise I'd be interested in any feedback.
New release:
Winmail 2.1 (Donation Version)
In addition to the free version this version adds the following features:
Appointments / Calendar Items extracted into standard *.ics files (VCALENDAR industry standard) which can be imported into the device calendar
Enable / disable file browser in preferences
Launch file browser from within preferences
Browse extraction directory and subdirectories
Tap on files tries to open them according to mime type
Long tap on files opens context menu (open with, rename, send, delete)
Download:
Google Play Link Free Version
Google Play Link Donate Version
Older releases:
Winmail 1.0
some code cleanup
stability improvements
tapping on the explanation screen will launch this thread in web browser
Winmail_0.9.2
Changelog:
added the capability to extract vcards
added the capability to process/extract "multipart/*" type mime files
added user preference whether the app should create an own subdirectory for each file/mail
Winmail_0.9.1
Changelog:
added the capability to extract the message body text in either *.txt, *.html or *.rtf format depending on the original type. The message is written to the extraction directory and its file name contains the actual date and time to be able to distinguish the message files
some minor UI tweaks
Enjoy!
cooltide

reserved for future purposes

There's something I forgot. Here's a winmail.dat file for testing purposes

Superb app
Superb app to view mail attachments which weren't readable on Android otherwise. Any chance to also view or even accept appointments sent from Outlook?
Rgds

Thank you very much! I am currently looking into this calendar issue. This trickier than the other stuff. Will keep you posted.
Brgds

..

It was reported that the app was not shown as a handler for winmail.dat files by some file explorers and mail clients.
While I am investigating this the workaround is to use the OI File Manager which always worked for me.

cooltide said:
It was reported that the app was not shown as a handler for winmail.dat files by some file explorers and mail clients.
While I am investigating this the workaround is to use the OI File Manager which always worked for me.
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Sent from my Galaxy J3 (2017) using XDA Labs

GM192513d

PepePlemmie3.7

Automatic Sync Content

Hi all,
I use my rooted NST most for read content I catch on Web, like blog entries, articles, etc. Currently I find the content, generate a .epub with caliber or through services like EbookGlue, upload them to my dropbox account and later, on my device, I open dropbox client, download the .epub file to the My Files directory on my SD and finally I read it.
I am looking for a way to automatic sync these dropbox files to my library, as soon as I turn on WiFi connection.
Does any one know if there's a way to do it? Or some similar aproach to do it?
Thanks in advance!

Harlley Sathler said:
Hi all,
I use my rooted NST most for read content I catch on Web, like blog entries, articles, etc. Currently I find the content, generate a .epub with caliber or through services like EbookGlue, upload them to my dropbox account and later, on my device, I open dropbox client, download the .epub file to the My Files directory on my SD and finally I read it.
I am looking for a way to automatic sync these dropbox files to my library, as soon as I turn on WiFi connection.
Does any one know if there's a way to do it? Or some similar aproach to do it?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try dropsync, it autosyncs selected dropbox folders.

Oh, thanks! I didn't knew about dropsync. I'll try it as soon as go home today and post the results!

I just keep directories on my desktop filled with books and documentation.
I sync with adbsync: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1898358
I use it on my cell phone(s) and Nook(s).

Setting up Sync for FBReader

No longer working as of May 30, 2020--for a fix, see: https://forum.xda-developers.com/nook-touch/general/nst-g-fbreader-personal-catalog-sync-t4110171
FBReader (even the version made specifically for the NST) is supposed to have the capability to sync reading positions, bookmarks, etc., across devices. This is done by giving the FBReader servers permission to write/modify files in a folder on your Google Drive. We may debate the wisdom of giving the app limited access to your Google Drive, or we may just call it "whatever" and plan to have a Google account just for this one thing (my idea) and hope for the best. In all the time FBReader has been around I've never heard of any shenanigans. Just sayin...
So, the issue is with trying to log in to a Google account from the browser. I'm using Opera Mobile and at one time I was able to sign in on the Google home page. I can still sign in and out, but only with the original account I used I've checked for "less secure sign-in methods", etc., but no amount of fiddling seems to make any difference. Google says the password is "incorrect" for every account but that one I started with long ago. The passwords are correct, of course, it's just Google being Google.
What to do?
Whilst fooling with this recently, it occurred to me to try a trick I've used before: install the app on my little rooted KitKat device, set up the sync account, then copy out any relevant database files and configuration files. These files I then copy to the NST, overwriting what is there.
It took a bit of cleaning up because the directory structure in KitKat is different from that on the NST and there are some complaints from the app when you first start, but you just need to slowly clean up all the directory references in Settings and then it starts to work
A summary
0. You need another rooted device on which the FBReader app (attached below) will install and run.
1. Install FBReader on both your NST/G and the second device.
2. Go to books.fbreader.org and set up your Network Library (you pick the Google account (Google Drive) to use).
3. On the non-NST device, open FBReader and access "Network Library". This will take you to the browser to sign in to whatever Google account you have chosen.
4. Exit FBReader.
5. With a root file explorer, navigate to /data/data/org.geometerplus.zlibrary.ui.android. There are three folders in the directory. Copy all the db files from "databases" and from "shared_prefs" copy fbreader.auth.xml
6. Move these files to the NST/G and copy them into the same directories, overwriting the ones present.
7. With WiFi on, open FBReader on the NST/G. You will be challenged with an error if the path for cached files cannot be resolved. Tap on the folder option and navigate to select /sdcard/Books/.FBReader. This gets you past the first hurdle.
8. Tap at the bottom of the opening screen and select "Network Library". If things have gone sort of right up to this point you will see your Google account email under "FBReader book network".
9. Go back to the beginning and tap at the bottom to select More...Settings. Clean up the directories information as needed. Set up Synchronization (you can work on other stuff later).
10. Access Network Library again and try tapping on "FBReader book network". If you put any books into your account back in step 2, you can download one.
That's it! Of course, sync is limited by the fact that you have to be connected to WiFi, at least at the beginning and end of reading (may take little bit of time...not sure).